Archive for the ‘C.M. Murphy Oldsmobile’ tag

As is the case with most old dealership images we’ve run across lately, this mid-1960s postcard of Lesher-Muirhead Oldsmobile in San Francisco comes to us from Alden Jewell. And like many other dealerships we’ve researched for the Lost Dealership Project, Lesher-Muirhead’s history isn’t as straightforward as one photo would lead us to believe.

At the time the photo was taken, we’re rather certain that Lesher-Muirhead was owned at least in part by Edgar J. Fleck, a German who fled his native land for the United States before World War II. We’ve yet to find out when he bought into the dealership, but according to his obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, by 1974 he held enough control over the dealership to move it away from its location at 1515 South Van Ness Boulevard and into a new facility at 780 Serramonte Boulevard in Colma, south of San Francisco. It was there that the Oldsmobile dealership remained (at some point prior to 1980 renamed Serramonte Oldsmobile) until it was dissolved in 1993 by its then-owner, Tom Price, who appears to still own the Oldsmobile dealership’s successor, Stewart Chevrolet Cadillac.

Given that the Oldsmobile dealership wore two names that weren’t Fleck’s (one belonged to Alexander Muirhead, a Scottish immigrant), we can assume that it was already established before he bought into it. According to a forum member on GMinsidenews, which so far is the only reference we’ve seen to the dealership’s history prior to this photo, Lesher-Muirhead actually grew out of C.M. Murphy Oldsmobile, located at 19th Avenue and Junipero Serra Boulevard. Most references to C.M. Murphy place it there during the bulk of the 1950s, but we see at least one mention of it there through the early 1960s, fitting in nicely with references of Murphy becoming Lesher-Muirhead in the mid-1960s.

Interestingly, property valuation references for 1515 South Van Ness, the location in the photo, show that the building was erected in 1948. That building still stands today.